Following appeals for donations for refugees and a huge response from local people – including at St Denys Church on September 6 – Nicola Walters from Southampton Action gives an update on the massive sorting and shipping operation now underway.
Greg Wells unloading at Slough Trading Estate
Yesterday (Sept 19) we held a sorting event at City Life Church - Swaythling Methodist Church, where we had volunteers (approx 50 different people over the day) sorting donations out. We had people sorting donations into type (e.g. male clothes, women's clothes, food, toiletries, tents, blankets, sleeping bags etc.).
The point of this event was to sort the thousands of bags/boxes we have been given ahead of the CalAid drop off in Slough today. CalAid will then be shipping items to Calais over the coming months - they are an organised group who have a presence on the ground in Calais, so can distribute properly.
Where the demographics of the Calais refugees is primarily young men, they were looking for particular sized male clothes (e.g. small-medium trousers, shoes in certain sizes) and because it is important our donations are useful, we sorted our male clothes into the relevant required items.
Everything we wanted to send to CalAid (tents, blankets, sleeping bags, some toiletries/candles, men's clothes and men's shoes - certain required sizes only) were then boxed / bagged up, labelled so easier to manage at CalAid's end, and then packed into vehicles.
Our central team worked from 9am to 9pm yesterday, with volunteers joining us from 1pm to 8pm. The volunteers were great and enabled us to not only pack properly the donations, but also helped us sort out and store the donations we could not use for CalAid.
All the donations that could not be used for the CalAid drop will be stored for further shipping across Europe, places further afield where there are women, children and family groups.
This morning at 9am we set off in two vans from Southampton and headed to the drop off in Slough, arriving about 10:45am. We supported the event there for a while and also unloaded our vehicles with donations to their storage.
The Southampton Action central team will be meeting for a Committee meeting this week and will be advising of next steps, what we plan to do with the other donations (e.g. where shipping to) and how people can get involved, over the coming weeks.
In the meantime, people can visit our facebook page
www.facebook.com/southamptonaction or email us at
This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it. for further details.
Nicola Walters
Southampton Action
We're not currently accepting new comments on this site
